50 MONOPOLY CAPITAL
( 2) The attitude of live-and-let-live which characterizes Big
Business likewise -derives from the magnitude of the corpora-
tion's investment and from the calculating rationality of its
management. By and large, this attitude is reserved for other
big corporations and does not extend to the smaller business-
man. For example, the big three automobile companies behave
toward one another in a way that Schumpeter appropriately
called ''corespective,"31 while their behavior to the scores of
thousands of dealers who sell their products to the public is
notoriously overbearing and dictatorial. The reason, of course,
is that each of the big ones recognizes the strength and retalia-
tory power of the other big ones and as a matter of deliberately
calculated policy avoids provoking them. But corespective be-
havior is by no means limited to competitors. If one big corpo-
ration is not a competitor of another, it is quite likely to be
either a customer or a supplier; and in this realm of corporate
relations the sovereign principle is reciprocity, which enjoins
corespective behavior as surely as competition does. In addi-
tion, the Big Business community is numerically small, compris-
ing perhaps 10,000 or so people for the entire country, and its
members are tied together by a whole network of social as well
as economic ties. Conscious of their power and standing in the
larger national community, they naturally tend to develop a
group ethic which calls for solidarity and mutual help among
themselves and for presenting a common front to the outside
world.
It wasn't always so. In the early days when Big Business was
emerging from the jungle of small-scale competition, corespec-
tive behavior was rare indeed. Even the railroads had to go
through a series of exhausting rate wars before they finally got
it into their corporate heads that roadbeds and tracks and
locomotives and cars would go on being used to carry passen-
gers and freight whatever might happen to security owners or
rival managements. The original tycoons, faced with the conse-
31 Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, p. 90n.
THE GIANT CORPORATION 51
quences of cutthroat competition, sought a way out through a
policy of ruthless monopolization. The victims of this drive,
however, were numerous and not without influence. By enter-
ing into a temporary alliance with dissatisfied farmers and
workers, they succeeded in getting the antitrust laws passed,
which, though far from achieving their avowed aim of preserv-
ing (or restoring) free competition, nevertheless put very real
roadblocks in the way of full monopolization. For this reason,
as well as others of a technological and economic natt1re, there
were few cases in which one corporation or even one financial
interest group succeeded in establishing effective control over
an entire market.
It was under these circumstances that Big Businessmen
began to learn the virtues of corespective behavior. The pro-
cess of learning was hastened as the highly individualistic
tycoon passed from the scene and the company man gradually
took his place as the typical representative of corporate busi-
ness. Today there are probably fewer genuine monopolies than
there were at the turn of the century, but there is also infinitely
less cutthroat competition. And this brings us straight to the
problem of the interaction of the corporate giants.
__________________......